


A Family Found

by Ms_Ice



Series: Family in a Box [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pete's World (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 09:11:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19170202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ms_Ice/pseuds/Ms_Ice
Summary: After events in the Family Doctor, Metacrisis Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler travel in their newly grown TARDIS and receive a distress signal from Jenny, the Doctor's Daughter from the main universe. Together they discover a new threat to most living things.





	A Family Found

**Author's Note:**

> This is plotted out in my head as the first in a series of shorts with a new Doctor Who villain, something I'll be working on occasionally inbetween other projects.

Rose watched John carry the blonde woman into the TARDIS, an instant pang of jealousy striking her. She ignored the emotion and shut the doors remotely from the controls. A quick dash around the big circular console and she hit three levers, spun a wheel clockwise two and a half rotations, followed by lowering another bigger lever. She hadn’t finished the manual yet, but she was already better than John at operating their ship. He still had her at flying it manually through. 

The TARDIS quietly phased out of the empty space station, leaving behind the strange place the distress signal had come from. No damage, fully operational, yet lacking oxygen and only one person left alive. Barely. The lights inside the glass diamond centered above the console swirled faster as Rose took the TARDIS away from the station. Only once they were a safe distance did she focus more on her husband and the blonde woman in a space suit. John had already put the woman on the couch facing console.

The woman’s space suit was somewhat bulky and wrinkled, the big complicated helmet now on the floor next to the couch. The girl’s face was soft and young, maybe in her early twenties at best. Rose was sure she wasn’t dead, otherwise John wouldn’t have brought her in.

“Who is she?” Rose asked.

“She’s his daughter,” answered John quietly.

Rose’s breath caught in her throat.

“What?”

“Sorry. She’s his clone from the planet Messaline. They did it without his permission, but she died before he left.”

“Apparently not. I mean… she’s not dead yet… is she?”

“No. The station’s oxygen was nearly gone but I think there was just enough… give me a hand.”

John had already removed the girl’s gloves and had finally managed to unlatch two clasps at the waist of the girl’s suit. Rose grabbed the suit’s wrists carefully and started pulling upwards. Between the two of them they were able to take off the top of the space suit like a sweater. The girl was wearing a black t-shirt underneath and she hadn’t responded at all. John reached up into the air with one hand and slammed it down on the girl’s chest. The woman gasped sharply and sat up suddenly, wide eyed and confused for a moment. John was grinning.

“There! She’s apparently more Timelord than he had realized. She just needed a jumpstart.” He leaned back and looked at the blonde woman as she watched them both.

“Hi dad,” she said to John like it was nothing unusual.

Both John and Rose frowned, but John answered.

“Oh no, I’m not your dad. My name is John. Jenny, meet my wife Rose.”

Rose gave a little wave, unsure of how to react to the stranger in their TARDIS. Jenny seemed not to believe them though.

“I’m sorry, what? So first you abandon me, then you disown me? Thanks for saving me pops, but just drop me off on the nearest occupied station.”

Jenny got up and started to head further into the TARDIS, holding the space suit pants up as John stood there in shock.

“Jenny! No, I mean it! I’m not…”

“Wow, who put the stick up her bottom?”

Rose added as Jenny disappeared down the hallway and John just stared after her. Then Rose saw the frustration and pain on John’s face and she put a hand on his arm, changing gears quickly.

“I’ll talk to her. If she’s his daughter I guess that makes her kind of our daughter.”

That statement put another round of shock on John’s face, one Rose was trying to work around herself. The words had come out of her mouth before she’d really thought about it. She took a calming breath before following after Jenny. The Doctor’s Daughter or not, Rose didn’t like someone hurting her husband like that. He deserved so much better.

Rose followed the arched gray passages of the TARDIS as she tried to catch up to Jenny. She ended up getting lost for a minute before she finally found Jenny standing in a hallway looking back and forth. Rose knew that look, it had taken her and John weeks to map out the newly grown TARDIS. She still swore the TARDIS changed occasionally just mess with them.

“The bathroom is back that way on the right,” Rose offered half in jest, half seriously.

“Look, Rose was it? I’m sorry but if he can’t accept me I don’t want anything to do with him.”

“He’s not who you think he is.”

“What, he regenerated? He certainly looks the same.”

“He’s a copy. Kind of a clone, mixed with Donna’s DNA.”

“Wait. You mean someone went and combined my mom and my dad to make… him?”

“He is my husband and his name is John.”

“Right, sorry. What about the TARDIS?”

“Grown from a piece of it after it exploded.”

“Does that mean… is my dad…”

“No! Oh gods no, she’s fine in the other dimension. She’s the one that gave us a piece of the TARDIS.”

“What do you mean ‘she’?”

“Oh. Yeeeah. So apparently the Doctor regenerated into a woman.”

“Well then… anything else I should know?”

“I’m not sure there’s enough time in the world to answer that question… even with the TARDIS.”

For a moment they just stood there in silence as Jenny tried to process everything. Rose did the same as she realized Jenny’s ‘parents’ were effectively both gone. The closest she had now was John, which made Rose something like Jenny’s stepmom. Rose touched her belly. They’d have their own child eventually. It was a shame the Doctor would never meet their child from the other dimension. Suddenly a thought occurred to her.

“Jenny, how did you get onto that station?”

“Well, after leaving Messaline I flew around for awhile. I saw the Rose nebula and visited the shrine of Kik-te-cornit natu. I just wanted to see the sights at first, like dad had offered to show me. Then I received a distress signal and thought maybe I could help like he did. I evacuated the station and stayed behind to eliminate the threat.”

Rose didn’t miss how Jenny skipped over some major things in that story, but before she could ask Jenny continued.

“You’re her, aren’t you?”

“Who?”

“The woman my dad had lost. The woman the Rose nebula was named after.”

“What makes you think it was named after me?”

“It’s your eyes. Something about them remind me of the nebula. According to the folklore in the computer a man was forced to leave his love with another man, lest the universe unravel for both of them.”

Rose felt her heart ache for a moment. She and John had a spark but there was always part of her that remembered the original.

“He never said it.”

“Never said what?”

“Nothing. She has her crew and her homeworld now at least.”

“I thought her planet was destroyed?”

“Nope. I… well, another me, helped the war Doctor save his planet. They’re still alive.”

“Dad’s homeworld? I’ve gotta see that!”

Suddenly Jenny was thrilled and ran back towards the control room. Rose smirked.

“Gonna tell her you were listening in the whole time?” she asked out loud.

She looked around the corner at John, having felt his presence earlier when he’d snuck up. They were linked through the TARDIS thanks to the Doctor.

“Nawww. Are you okay?”

He moved around behind her and wrapped his arms around her, one hand resting on her belly. There was no bulge yet but the Doctor had warned them pregnancy worked weirdly in the TARDIS. She leaned back against him and put her hands over his.

“I’m fine. Are you okay?”

“Yeeah, I’m just surprised to see her again. When he last saw her she’d been shot in the chest and her body was about to be buried. I guess she had just enough regenerative energy to heal her wound eventually.”

He lowered his head and rested his chin ontop her head, then continued quieter.

“Practice for what's ahead?”

“I guess so.”

Jenny came bounding back down the hallway as she saw them finally.

“Dad! Can we go see your homeworld? Pleeeease?”

Rose heard the resignation in John’s voice as he started to accept the role of dad. She knew it had to sting since he had once had a family.

“Not yet Jenny. First you need to tell me what happened to that station.”

“Oh, I took care of that. There was some kind of oxygen eating… thingie. Maybe a gas, I dunno. I evacuated the station and pumped the bridge extra full of oxygen to lure all of the stuff onto the bridge, then vented everything into space. All done.”

Rose felt the tension increasing in her husband’s body and she gave his hand a squeeze. He took a deep breath against her back and she knew he was glaring at Jenny, trying to control his anger.

“Was it alive?”

“What?” Jenny hesitated at his attitude.

“Was it alive? Did you try to communicate with it?”

“No… it killed three people by moving into their lungs and preventing them from being able to breath, followed by another two in space suits. I couldn’t let it kill everyone else!”

Rose held up her hands as she realized exactly where the conversation was headed.

“Okay, stop, both of you. John, there was no way she could have known if it was alive or not. She was focused on saving lives, not thinking outside the box.”

She just knew Jenny was smiling smugly at John over her shoulder and she rounded on Jenny next.

“And Jenny, you’re gonna have to learn that all life is important and deserves a chance. We don’t just go around killing others just because we don’t understand them.”

Jenny looked like she was about to argue but Rose gave her a stern glare. Jenny stopped and gave a huff instead, nodding after a second.

“Yes mom.”

“Good. Now we were on our way to Jelonoris Nineteen-”

“Actually…” cut in John, “I’d like to go back to that space station. I’ve never seen a gaseous oxygen eating thingie before.”

Rose rolled her eyes, “As I was saying, we were on our way to Jelonoris Nineteen, but we should probably go back and investigate that oxygen eating… thingie.”

John was grinning at Rose while Jenny was frowning.

“You want us to go back there… you realize the station has no oxygen right?”

“Oooh that’s easy. We have space suits.”

“So did Friedman and Leeann.”

“We’ll be fiiine. Our space suits are special.”

Rose grinned.

“Made by Torchwood just for us.”

“I don’t know who or what Torchwood is, but okay. Do I get one too?”

John frowned and answered that one quickly.

“No. You’re staying in the TARDIS.”

Rose recognized that tone, the Doctor had used it on her a lifetime ago.

“Not a chance! I know the layout and have more experience with the thingie. It’d be tactically advantageous to be with you.”

“No. If we hadn’t come along when we had you would have died. You already died once in my arms and I’m not letting it happen again.”

Rose understood his pain as always, but she also knew how Jenny felt. And she knew Jenny would sneak out the moment they left.

“Jenny, can you excuse us for a moment please?”

Jenny nodded but Rose had already slipped her arm around John’s and was guiding him to the side. She pulled him into what turned out to be another kitchen. Her pink bow was sitting on the counter and she perked up.

“Oh hey, I was looking for this.”

When she turned around John was looking sternly at her.

“No,” was all he said.

“John, I understand. I don’t want anything to happen to her either. But remember she’s just like you. What do you think will happen the moment we leave the TARDIS?”

“She’ll… oh. But we can’t just let her come with us.”

“Would you rather her go with us or go alone?”

“Ahhh bugger.”

John frowned and stepped back out with Rose following. Jenny was standing in the same place and looking suspicious. That only made John’s frown deepen.

“Alright, you can come with. But you have to stay close and do what I say. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes sir!”

Jenny saluted sharply before giving a squee and running down the hallway. Rose nearly laughed out loud.

“Wow, she really is just like you.”

“Oh shut up. You’re no better.” John kissed her on the side of her head and they headed towards the command center smiling together.

 

 

The TARDIS phased gracefully right into the middle of a large cargo room with a quiet whooshing noise. John’s glass dome covered head popped out of the door first, followed by his right hand with his sonic screwdriver lighting up. He checked the readout and a moment later he stepped out onto the metal floor.

“Lights and gravity still active. The power is still on just no oxygen. No surprise there.”

Rose and Jenny stepped out of the TARDIS and joined John in looking around, everyone in matching blue bodysuits that were well padded in strategic places. The space station’s cargo bay was like every other cargo bay Rose had ever seen. Hundreds of crates ranging from the size of a microwave to the size of a school bus filled the huge steel beamed chamber.

“Jenny did you drain the reserves too?” asked Rose as she looked at the air vents in the ceiling ducts.

“The thing drained those first as far as we could tell.”

Rose could hear John’s frown through the helmet speakers when he spoke.

“Nothing should have been able to get into those tanks. Even radiation can’t get through them.”

“Tell that to whatever that stuff is. And tell me again why we didn’t just land on the bridge?”

“There wasn’t space.”

“How did you get me the first time?”

“Snatch and grab, didn’t completely materialize. Besides, the oxygen eating thingie didn’t start on the bridge and I’d very much like to know where it came from.”

“John, seriously, can we name it already? This whole ‘thingie’ is getting out of hand.”

Jenny “Ooo! Can I name it? I’ve never named anything before.”

“Sure, why not,” decided John.

“Ummm… Anti-Oxygen? Air eater? Nonono… Donna made my name by combining two words from what I am. Sooo… Antoxy? Anox?”

Rose had to grin as she watched and listened to Jenny. John was as child-like as the Doctor at times, but both of them were still haunted by their pasts. Jenny was like a young version of him, unaffected by hundreds of years of loss.

“I like it. Anox it is. So John you think it might have come from these containers?” Rose motioned towards the plethora of shipping containers filling the cargo bay. The containers John was now walking away from.

“I’m hoping the manifest will answer that question.”

John finally found a computer console on the wall and started typing as Jenny and Rose looked over his shoulders. Jenny only stayed for a second before going back to the containers.

“Dad, you know I already looked through the manifest, right?”

Suddenly John and Rose both froze, glancing at each other briefly before looking back at the screen. There is was on line ten, ‘Bad Wolf Shipping’.

John whispered softly, “That’s not possible,” then selected it and the screen showed a display of where the cargo container was.

John looked around once before making a mad dash across the cargo bay, Rose hot on his heels. They heard Jenny call out and run to follow them, but neither paid her any mind. Bad Wolf meant there was far more at stake than they had originally considered.

Dodging around a few huge crates John and Rose came upon the location of the forewarned crate. It was about three feet wide and high, then five feet long. Much to Rose’s chagrin she found Jenny right beside them, not even out of breath like both of them.

“Dad, what’s going on?”

John was catching his breath, something he had learned to get used to versus the original Doctor’s memories, but he took out his sonic and started scanning the container. Rose looked to Jenny with a frown.

“It’s a long story. If you ever see Bad Wolf written somewhere odd, tell us right away.”

“Okay. What does it mean?”

“It means the universe is in danger,” answered John.

“From what? A race of wolves?”

“What? No. The past times the Doctor saw those words they heralded the return of the Daleks, creatures out to-”

“I know who the Daleks are dad. While traveling through space I’ve read as much history around you… I mean the Doctor... as I could.”

“That’s all ancient history. What’s important is the here and now. Like what’s in this container. The shipping manifest says it’s ball bearings but there’s only one way to find out!”

John scanned the container keypad and it made a beep before the top hissed and opened upwards. Inside was trays of ball bearings, dozens and dozens of shiny dark silver orbs the size of a human eyeball each. John picked one up and looked at it closely for a moment.

“Well?” asked Rose.

“It’s a ball bearing.”

“Just a ball bearing?”

“Just a normal average ball bearing as near as I can tell.”

“So much for the big bad wolf,” joked Jenny as she walked away. John kept scanning the ball bearings while Rose started examining the crate further.

After a moment John stood up and scratched at his head.

“I don’t get it. Why bad wolf? Why ball bearings? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Dad. I have a problem here.”

Jenny had returned to them with a small amount of concern in her voice.

“What’s wrong?” asked Rose first.

“The little oxygen meter is going down.”

“That’s not possible.” John said as he rushed to Jenny and circled around her, scanning her with his sonic. “I helped design these suits myself! They’ll even protect from multi-dimensional radiation! Nothing should be able to get through it.”

“Tell that to the Anox! What do I do?! Go back in the TARDIS?”

“No! Don’t go into the TARDIS. She might take the Anox as a threat and leave. We need to find out what the Anox are. Rose, can you get the multiphasic anomaly scanner from the TARDIS?”

“On it!”

Rose headed around the crates and back towards their blue police box. As she approached at a dash she heard the tell-tale whooshing of the TARDIS starting to leave.

“No! John she’s leaving!”

By time Rose reached the TARDIS it was too late, their ship was fading out. John let out a frustrated noise into the intercom.

“Aaah I should have known! Rose check your meter.”

“It reads… no… wait. It just went down visibly. John… what about yours?”

“Same. It just started. Jenny, you’ve inventoried this whole station right? What kind of scanning does it have?”

“Nothing that could detect the Anox, I tried everything I could find.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“Dad, how is that good?

Rose looked at John for a moment as she re-joined them at a wall console.

“Another dimension?” she asked.

“Maaaybe. We can’t see them. We can’t hear or smell them. We can’t scan them...”

John waggled his sonic screwdriver as he started his problem pacing. Rose nearly grinned. He was sexy when he got like that.

“But we know where they are and what they do,” Rose added.

“Correct! If they are affecting our oxygen then they have to have some sort of physical influence on the atomic level. What we need is a bigger scanner! Jenny, where’s the medbay?”

“We already tried that dad!”

“But you didn’t have me!”

John started running towards the exit and Rose naturally followed, their newly adopted daughter running after them a second later. At the first intersection John turned right and Jenny passed Rose to go left.

“This way dad!”

John switched directions and they followed Jenny through the corridors until they reached signs for the medbay. Once there John took one look around before rushing up to the medical bed.

“Jenny get on the bed.”

Rose caught a glance of Jenny rolling her eyes behind the glass dome of the helmet.

“Oi! Don’t you roll your eyes at us young lady! Get onto the bed!”

With a huff Jenny climbed awkwardly onto the bed, moving surprisingly easily in the space suit. She laid down on her back as John grabbed the scanner on it’s mobile arm and aimed his sonic at it for a moment. Then he slowly ran the scanner over Jenny, pausing it over where the nano-air tanks were attached to the suit. Suddenly he jerked the scanner to one side and back, then did it again.

Rose raised an eyebrow.

“What is it?”

“I think I found the Anox,” he offered the scanner to Rose and she stepped up. There were blue blurs that didn’t seem to mean anything.

“Scan over one of the tanks, then move it quickly back.”

She did as he said while watching the screen. As she moved it sharply back to one side she saw it. A very brief yellow collection of dots on the side of screen. They disappeared almost as fast as she moved the scanner, almost like they saw it coming and were trying to hide from it.

“What are they?” asked Rose as Jenny took the screen and tried to scan herself like they had.

“Those, my love, are the Anox. I’m not sure if they are nanites or living organisms, but they seem to phase between dimensions with ease. They come across and feed on the oxygen until it’s gone, or until someone tries to scan them, then they cross back over to their dimension. Those dots are just traces of their passage between dimensions, echoes of where they were a second ago.”

“Can you kill them?” asked Jenny. John glared at her.

“We’re not killing them. But if we can keep the scanner on them long enough it should let the TARDIS return.”

Rose considered for a second.

“We’d need a pretty big scanner. Maybe a rapid pulse from the ship’s life support scanner?”

“Not fast enough. But in a much smaller room, maybe.”

“Dad, I’m down to thirteen percent oxygen. I think the scanning made them speed up.”

“I’ve got forty-six percent,” added Rose. “John?”

“Ooooh about four percent.”

Rose could hear his breathing getting a bit heavier already and she smacked him on the arm.

“I swear! How you’ve survived this long is beyond me.”

Rose ignored Jenny’s expression of near panic and looked at the scanner for a second as she wracked her brain for ideas. Jenny may be part Time Lord, but she wasn’t as used to this as Rose was. Something John had said gave her an idea.

“You said the ship life scanner wasn’t fast enough, but what if we widened the range of medbay scanner and timed it in between pulses of the ship scanner?”

Jenny stared at Rose for a second while John grinned.

“Rose, remind me to kiss you once we’re out of these suits. Okay! Jenny you need…” he nearly fell over as Jenny and Rose both grabbed his arms.

“Oh no you don’t! Sit that pretty bottom down. Jenny and I got this. Jenny check the settings on that scanner. Try to to find one wide enough to see his whole body in one shot, maybe looking from the head down.”

“Yes mum!”

Rose could hear the joy in Jenny’s voice at being able to help, but she was in panic mode. She rushed to the nearest main console on one wall and looked over the controls. Either the keyboard was already in English or the TARDIS’s language translator was translating it for her. She typed in ‘activate life scanner’ and a picture of the station came up. Touching the screen she eventually figured out how to direct the scanner to focus on the medbay.

Nothing seemed to change in the med bay as she activated the scanner, but the representation of the ship suddenly showed three icons for life forms in the med bay. There was a scroll bar nearby and the raised it to the max. The three icons sharpened in detail until she could actually make out the shapes of each of them.

“There, that should do it. Any luck Jenny?”

“I set it to max mum.”

“Any change luv?”

“Two percent and holding. Now if we only had more scanners we could clear a space for the TARDIS.”

Jenny was grinning.

“I’ve got this dad.”

She yoinked the sonic screwdriver from John’s breast pocket then looked to Rose.

“All three scanners right here?”

“Try four.”

Rose took out the sonic screwdriver John had helped her make. Turning the scan radius to the highest setting she aimed it at John. Jenny stepped back and did the same. With the combination of the shipwide scanner, the medbay scanner, and both sonic screwdrivers, they covered the area around him in scanning waves and fields. Seconds later the wonderful whooshing sound of the TARDIS filled the medbay.

The blue policebox faded into the world right overtop of John, filling the area cleared by the scans. It didn’t stay though, fading right back out with John inside.

Rose and Jenny lowered the sonics.

“Well, I guess it’s in his hands now,” Jenny said as she sat down on the medbay bed. Her breathing was growing more labored like John’s had.

“How much do you have left?”

“Six percent.”

“Good. I’m at thirty.” Rose took the sonic from Jenny and nudged the medbay scanner over her. “Your turn next.” She turned both sonics on her adopted daughter and slightly varied angles.

“Mom, no… what about-”

Then the whooshing of the TARDIS’s return drowned Jenny out and she disappeared with the second emergency pick up. A sudden series of sparks came from the medbay scanner as it failed. Rose’s hopes fell suddenly with that failing device. She checked the scanner’s screen. It was blank.

“Guess she had it turned up too high. Oh well.”

She watched her oxygen meter rapidly falling as the Anox converged on her air tanks and lungs. Turning both sonic screwdrivers on herself slowed down the decline at least. Then the light on John’s sonic faded out. She laughed.

“Of course. Out of charge.”

She felt it getting harder to breath already and she sat down on the medbay bed. Her oxygen was down to four percent. Then it was gone and she felt her lungs struggling for air. Her vision faded to black as she passed out.

When Rose opened her eyes again she was laying on the floor of the TARDIS, John and Jenny crouched over her.

“What’d I miss?” she said as she found her lungs were working again. The helmet was laying on the floor nearby. Both John and Jenny hugged her tightly and she nearly felt like crying with joy.

John answered when they finally released her.

“I had to go for a quick walk, buuut I found a scanner big enough to clear the whole station. The Jinop of Jinorp Twenty-Nine are going to miss their satellite for a few hours, but they’ll be fine.”

“I’m sure they will. They can wait though.”

Rose pulled John back to her and kissed him firmly right on the lips.

“Mom! Dad! Get a room!” Jenny exclaimed before looking away.

“Gladly,” John said as he picked Rose up and they headed towards their bedroom.

“What about the Anox?” Jenny added after them.

“Later. And welcome to the family Jenny.”


End file.
